I had an epiphany on the way to work this morning...
If somebody gave me a time machine and said
"you have 30 minutes to go back in time to tell yourself something, and your past self will believe you"
The following came to mind....
I would love to think the noble thing, go deep, and think of a way to save someones life or whatever...no I am way more selfish then that, I thought of ways to make myself suddenly rich.
But then, the truth hit very hard.
I can NOT go back in time and tell my younger self any stock tips from the last 29 years. I can quickly think of a couple handfuls of ones to tip off to my former self without a lot of research. Microsoft, Google, etc... But here is the real problem, my younger self never had any money to invest. So even if I had a hot tip from the future, it would not have made a difference.
Sure you can say "you only would have needed a couple thousand to invest."
Exactly!, past self would not have succeeded if he only needed a couple hundred at most times, and I have not got the time to calculate what investments I could time up with the brief weeks I had a comma in my checkbook.
So in light of that thought I had to rethink my time travel question again...
I would go back about 2 weeks ago and tell myself lottery numbers, only 2 weeks because I would not have collected yet, and I would like to experience that and everything else from then on.
(no matter the size of the lottery- I am pretty sure I could survive on 6-10 million or more)
Sadly it would be the only investment I could have afforded.
It is here that I will insert my nobleness:
Only two weeks ago for the reason I already said and also, my younger self obviously was not ready for any money, let alone big money.
Now at my current age would be a pretty great time for it, and to appreciate sharing the money with my wife, and giving each of our kids about 20 bucks and listen to them whine as I climb into my motorhome and shut the door.
While we are driving cross country we then will find some noble things to do.
-epiphany over
